My Korea - Kevin O'Rourke

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claim to the first light of the sun. And if you think selling humanity short is anything less than a universal sin, think again. Northern Ireland, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are tips of the iceberg, historical symbols of the inhumanity of man.

      Sŏ Chŏngju had a keen awareness of modern man’s penchant for the shameful deed, but he also had a great ability to see the beauty of old Korea.

      The people of old Chosŏn were too pure-hearted to commit any of those ugly, seedy sins that bring pain to the world after death, so when they breathed their last and crossed into eternity, they had no bitter remorse, no teeth-grinding rancour. Eternal life in the role of Immortals and nymphs, however, was so interminably protracted that sheer excess of boredom sometimes brought an itch, and when this happened, they would ask the most beautiful among the nymphs to scratch the itchy spot.

      Mago was famous as the nymph who best scratched the itchy spot. As a consequence of her fame, even Chinese Immortals in later ages pleaded their cases with her.

      This is why those old dolmens from Tan’gun Chosŏn – beds with ceilings that dot the northern frontier – have always been called Mago Houses.

      Sŏ Chŏngju (1915–2000)

      Some people see only what they want to see. I see the ugly as well as the beautiful. Living the spirit of the Tao Te Ching is not easy. I have great difficulty in seeing the ugly as a dirty window that can be cleaned with a rub of a cloth. Manil-sa, a nondescript temple in the south built on an incredibly beautiful site, is a paradigm of the mysterious turns that the beautiful takes in Korea:

      The king’s seal teeters in air;

      mountain tops are geese in flight.

      This is a magic place, made for monk things.

      The temple site is perfect

      though nothing that stands there is old

      except the stone stele inscribed with

      the names of Yi Sŏnggye and the founding monk.

      A blue plastic can spoils

      the mountain god’s shrine.

      Why seek out the ugly?

      Does not the beautiful suffice?

      Vision is never just black and white.

      Ugly and beautiful are sides of a coin;

      they need each other to get the balance right.

      If you want to see Korea’s traditional beauty, you must go to the temples. At the same time be aware that few man-made artefacts in Korea, including temple buildings, are very old. Wars, fires, and the elements have seen to that. And those ugly plastic cans are everywhere.

      The awareness of Korea’s natural beauty is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the nineteenth century when Korea was still a hermit kingdom, the tops of mountains and headlands were denuded, and the countryside, at least what was visible from the sea, was deliberately made ugly in order to discourage interest on the part of foreign devils. From the beginning of vehicular traffic at the end of the nineteenth century, until Park Chunghee began the modern hardtop road system in the late ’60s, the country was permanently shrouded in a layer of dust. In 1964, there were a hundred kilometres of paved roads in the entire country: Seoul to Osan, Hongch’ŏn to Inje, and part of the Seoul to Ch’unch’ŏn road. A recent Hwang Sŏg’yŏng novel notes that there was hardtop in Yŏngdŭngp’o. I was not aware of this. In the ’60s and ’70s, buses and trucks roared along country roads filling the air and lungs with grit. It was a lot of fun getting where you wanted to go, but you arrived with dust embedded in every pore. Natural beauty was not a typical topic of discussion. Modernization brought roads, and roads ended that all-pervasive cloud of dust, except, that is, for the Gobi Desert dust storms, loaded with various types of insidious Chinese goo that continue to bedevil us every year.

      Modernization inevitably brought destruction in its wake. Most of the interesting parts of downtown Seoul have disappeared. In the ’60s and ’70s the area around City Hall had lovely winding alleyways dotted with teahouses and drinking establishments where artists and writers held court. You could walk into a tearoom and meet Kim Tongni or Sŏ Chŏngju or any one of a dozen of the most important men in the arts. The greats sported their fame; they didn’t feel the need to hide behind the veil of anonymity.

      Kim Sŭngok’s ‘Seoul 1964, Winter’ was the cult story of the decade; it proclaimed a new post-war existentialism, very exciting and very avant-garde, which sent me looking for the scratch on the door of the toilet in the Yŏngbo Building in Chongno 2 ka, the street lights that weren’t working in Pyŏnghwa market, and the dark windows in the Hwashin Department Store. I hate what the City has done to the area between the old Hwashin and Kwanghwamun, and what it has done to all of Mu’gyodong and the area at the back of City Hall; and I regret the gutting of one of the last bastions of old Seoul, Sajikdong, between the old Naija Hotel and Independence Gate. There is much talk of the glories of Pukch’on, a village of hanok houses in Chongno, but much of Pukch’on has already suffered the indignity of developers’ bulldozers. North Ahyŏndong, Wangshimni, Tongŭimun, Chŏngnyangni and Kirŭmdong are all being remade. When these new town projects are complete, hardly a stone of old Seoul will be intact. The cultural loss is colossal, but Seoul’s heart beats on.

      I grieve with you

      in grieving over the past:

      the felling of a world tree,

      leaves scattered

      who knows where.

      Yet the tree lives on,

      a shredded jigsaw

      carved on

      memory’s bone.

      Until recently Korea didn’t really care about such cultural loss. More significantly her people rarely raised a word of objection. In the last few years, the newspapers have featured a spate of articles calling for conservation in Wangshimni, Tongŭimun, Kirŭmdong and other new town centres. The call for conservation comes too late for the road along the Han to Ch’unch’ŏn, and the road by the P’aldang Dam to Yang-dŏg’wŏn and Hongch’ŏn, which have been defaced by ugly kalbi houses, love hotels, and cafes. The same fate has befallen the road north to Kŭmhwa through Ildong and Idong, a scenario that has been repeated throughout the country wherever new roads to tourist destinations have been made. High-rise apartments have turned the village of Masŏk into an eyesore; it was once one of the most beautiful village landscapes in the world. And I shudder to think of what’s been done to Tonamdong, that lovely old residential area in Seoul. The light of the sun has been denied forever to its residents. If you want to know what the old Tonam Market was like, you have to have been there or read Pak Wansŏ. Thank God for one or two people with sensibility who regret the sacking of the lovely old in favour of the biscuit tin new. And thank God for those who have preserved the old beauty in those alleys near An’guktong Rotary, across the road from the entrance to Insadong, with their lovely hanok houses, wine bars, and teahouses.

      The area is a rarity in modern Seoul; indeed very few people even knew it was there until four or five years ago when the boom in restaurants, cafes, wine bars, and small boutiques began to pick up speed. I remember Sŏr’aksan when it was pure magic. If you stood below the temple and looked up, the mountain soared above you on all sides. One gigantic parking lot destroyed the landscape; space replaced mystery. There’s a temple near Songch’u, with a bell tower from the seventeenth century and a main worship hall that looks even older. An elephant painting, and other abstract paintings on themes I haven’t seen elsewhere, adorn the outside walls of the main worship hall. The paintings are on plain timber, none of the usual red and green tanch’ŏng colouring. It’s a beautiful building but spoiled by the new buildings and the modern granite Mireuk on the hill behind. The Korea I know and love has always mixed liberal doses of the ugly with the beautiful.

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